Fragile
by fireflycat
Summary: Cyborg reflects on the technology that changed him and reveals just how much it has affected him.  Rated T for some mild language and dark themes


_Obligatory disclaimer: blah blah blah, I own nothing. In fact, my eyeballs were just repossessed._

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How many times a day do you hurt yourself?

I'm not talking about that emo "I'm sad so I'll cut myself" crap that was so popular back in the day, but just the regular day to day stuff. A paper cut, you stub your toe walking to the toilet in the middle of the night, maybe you bump up against something a little too hard or push yourself just a little too far in the gym. Hell, I bet there are scratches and bruises on your body right now that you have no idea where they came from.

You just don't think about them; for you they are the battle scars of life. Me, I have spent hours thinking about them. Remembering each scrape and bruise.

Remembering what I've lost.

See, I'm not what you would classify as being in mint condition. Not anymore, not for years. I was in an accident a long time ago, a bad one. I can't remember exactly how bad it was and for that I'm grateful. Since that day I have perfect recall, in 3D with surround sound, but for that day there are only fragments. Bits and pieces, that's all that's left. More like memories of memories. Maybe once I could remember more and I made myself forget; I don't know anymore. What I do know is that I lost my mother that night and I almost lost my life.

Both of my parents were some of the greatest scientists in the world in the field of robotics. Their little "pet project" was the creation of robotic limbs for use as prosthetics. After the accident, I was in bad shape. Another one of those memories I'm glad I don't have any more. Dad was grieving and made what was possibly a bad choice. I can't blame him, although I did at the time. I blamed him for a lot of stuff after the accident, when I wasn't blaming myself, mostly because he was there.

It was a shock, seeing what had been done to me. You don't expect to look down at yourself and see this alien body, all metal and circuitry, where your body used to be. _I glowed in the dark_. You couldn't even begin to imagine the horror. I wanted to climb out of my own skin, not that I had much of it left.

I couldn't really go anywhere anyway. Cybernetic prosthetics don't work like flesh and bone; it takes time for you to learn how to control them, how to get them to respond. I was trapped inside a body I couldn't move, alone in my head for most of the time. Dad was there during the day, and there were assistants and therapists everywhere. I hadn't realized just how important my parents' research was, it was just that thing they did when they weren't with me.

The nights, when I was supposed to be in sleep mode and everyone was gone ... those felt endless.

The thing is, when you don't have anything to occupy yourself, your mind will try to fill that time for you. I didn't dream, I haven't had a real dream since the accident and I don't know if I still could, but I remembered things. Good things and bad. The pain I was feeling, that kind of grief and guilt, is like a fire inside you. It's hard to maintain that intensity without consuming yourself in the process. I missed her, but the pain faded. I often wished it had been me who had died, that my dad had not turned me into this mechanical _thing_ that I had become, but I began to understand why he had done it.

But I was still a monster.

And then I was given the second worse news of my life.

The prosthetics I had been fitted with were highly experimental, the most advanced of their kind. Artificial nerves were able to react to a limited range of stimulus; I could touch an object and things like temperature, resistance, and density were transmitted via these nerves to my own nervous system, enabling me to "feel" what I had touched. Meshing the organic with the inorganic was a tricky thing; my parents had been experimenting with nanites to accomplish this. The microscopic robots joined what was left of my system with the artificial one, converting the purely empirical input into something my brain could interpret as sensation. It was nothing like what I had known before, there was and always has been a degree of numbness, but it could have been far worse. The idea of being stuck like this, but cut off from the world? I've had nightmares about that.

The nanites were the problem. In theory, they were self-sustaining colonies that would monitor and repair the connections between me and the prosthetics. But the world is not an ideal place. Test animals with colonies of the same nanites began to a disturbing trend, any injury the animal sustained healed much faster than it would have by itself. "Great!" you must be thinking, "That means you'll heal faster." While that may be true, it was not the animals' bodies that were doing the healing. The nanite colonies were repairing the physical damage faster than the host bodies could respond, something they had never been programmed to do, and the repairs were not organic. Flesh was being replaced with circuitry and machinery, down to the cellular level. It was perfectly functioning and identical in color and texture to the unaided eye, but artificial all the same. It wasn't just major injuries either; it was the everyday war wounds of life as well, the repairs a healthy body makes every single day. The prosthetics were spreading, overtaking the remaining tissue before the host body could react.

The implications stunned me. I've always been a good student, even when I was more interested in girls than grades. During my convalescence I had all the time in the world to study and in the lab there was no shortage of tutors and research materials. Biology wasn't my passion, but I had picked up enough of the basics.

I knew this - living creatures aren't made to live forever. Things stop working, cells fail to duplicate properly. Injury robs you of a piece of yourself. That's the nature of life.

But not my life.

Diseases wouldn't bother me, age would never touch me. The damned things they had put inside of me would keep me running even after I lost the will to do so. Inch by inch, little by little, I'd be eaten away. Replaced by artificial constructs for doing nothing but going about my life until every part that was still me was gone. Nibbled to death. And I probably wouldn't even realize it was happening.

There were two options; remove the little bastards, which would mean a slow death as my prosthetics ceased to function, or live with them. Forever. There was no middle ground, not then. Not even now. There have been attempts to reprogram the nanites, but they all ended in failure. With hundreds of generations being designed and redesigned every day, the tricky devils could out-evolve any virus or sleeper program devised.

Life and an eventual future as an immortal robot, or death. Some choice.

I went a little crazy for a while. By then I had control, more or less, over my body. No one told me I had to stay in the lab; it probably never occurred to them that I would want to leave. I hid my new body under loose clothing, trying to cover up the fact that I was now a freak. I didn't want people to stare at me - kinda funny, if you think about it; I used to live for that shit. Taking the field, making the winning touchdown, the whole stadium screaming my name, and all of it for me. I loved it, I won't lie. It was like a drug to me. The looks I got from the ladies; yeah, that was nice. Going from that to _this _was not easy.

I walked out. Right out of the lab, out of the city, and out of the state. I just kept walking. It was the closest I've ever come to being a machine, a real machine, and looking back it scares me. It would have been so easy to shut down, to let the robotic parts of my body take over. I'd stop where I could to recharge, and eat if I thought about it. Food didn't seem to interest me then, but I made up for that later. There are some perks to having an artificial digestive system.

I liked cities the best, the worse the area the better. There was something about the way people would avoid you when you walked in places like that that appealed to me. No one stared at me like I was a freak or a monster, they just left me alone. I would walk the streets for hours, just thinking. I had a lot to think about. It was on one of these walks that I met the people who would later become like family to me, the day Starfire fell out of the sky and into our lives.

I hesitated at first, in those early days; not enough to draw attention to the fact, but I felt it. I never told any of the guys about it I don't think they ever suspected how much it frightened me. Rae might have; she was always good at reading emotions, but she kept so many things to herself. The thought that I was one serious injury away from losing the little pieces of Victor that I still had, becoming all machine, still frightens me. Even now, when there is so little left of the original me.

At least, I think there is still some left. I do monthly scans, checking to see exactly what's me and what's machine. The nanites have had billions of generations to evolve and they seem to enjoy making little "improvements" in their work. The barrier between man and machine has grown thin over the years. Sometimes I think it has vanished all together.

It's been a long time, too long, since I was in the field. Those old fears, they still haunt me. I don't know if I could do any good out there anymore. A moment's hesitation, even just a fraction of a second, would mean disaster. For me, for one of my teammates, or for an innocent bystander, it doesn't matter. I can't take that chance. I have no problem risking my own life, but I will not put someone else in jeopardy.

I'm a relic now, an antique. A revered elder and valuable resource. The Titans, although much changed, still want me. I am a part of their history, the last of the founding members.

I've seen so many come and go; all my friends, the people I considered my family. I loved some, disliked others, but I have mourned each of them. Most have passed into history, the legends and myths of a more savage time. But I knew them as people, with faults and flaws like anyone else. I remember them, every one of them, as clear as if it were yesterday.

You would think it would get easier with time, seeing the old faces replaced with new ones. It doesn't.

I've served beside the children and grandchildren and great-great-grandchildren of people I knew decades, if not centuries, ago. I will not let my memories vanish with me, the technology now exists to download them into the mainframe so that anyone could put on immersion gear and relive what I have done. They will know them all as I have, not as ancient heroes but as real people. They may hate me for tearing down their gods, or revere me for this precious knowledge. I don't care. It is enough for me that they will be remembered, all of them. They have earned some measure of immortality.

I've downloaded all of my memories, the good and the bad, and sent copies to every Tower in the network. My last mission and one I have fulfilled gladly. This letter will get buried among the inconsequential memories, bits of my mundane life that no one will ever be interested in. I'm tired, so tired, no matter what my constantly improved body tells me. I have no purpose anymore. I'm outdated, outmoded, the remains of a vanished past. Supergirl, the fifth to wear that name, promises to help me. Together we have dug a chamber deep into the bedrock beneath the polar ice, not far from where the Fortress of Solitude once stood. The real one, not that ugly thing they put up for the tourists to gawk at. I'll be safe there, sleeping in the cold.

I don't think I'll dream, but I hope I will.

I'm just so tired of being careful.

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Auth_or's note - _

_This turned out a bit darker than I intended, but this was where it wanted to go. Many thanks to X-Chick218 for beta-reading for me. It's my very first fanfic, so p__lease leave me a review and let me know what you think. Please do not flame me, it makes me feel very stabbity._


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